RenCap’s Global Head of Equity Trading Leaves Amid Job Cuts

Feb. 18 (Bloomberg) -- Payam Akhavan-Malayeri, Renaissance
Capital’s global head of equity trading, said he left as the
bank owned by billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov extends jobs cuts to
sales and trading.

Akhavan-Malayeri joined Renaissance Capital’s London office
less than two years ago from Citigroup Inc., where he was co-head of equities trading for Central and Eastern Europe, the
Middle East and Africa. His departure late last week came at the
same time as Gene Turok, a managing director, and Andrei Anikin,
a vice president and 16-year employee, said two people with
knowledge of the matter.

“I have left the company,” he said by mobile today. “I
am having discussions with others” about potential jobs.

Renaissance Capital is continuing “organizational
adjustments to its structure, which reflect the current market
environment,” the bank’s press office said in an e-mailed
comment. Anikin didn’t answer his office phone in Moscow, and
the person who did said he’d left, while declining to be
identified. Turok didn’t answer his office phone in New York.

In the first round of cuts since Prokhorov gained control
of the investment bank from co-founder Stephen Jennings in
November, RenCap last week culled at least four of its 16
Moscow-based analysts, including Natalya Zagvozdina, who was
deputy head of the department.

China, India

The bank said last week that it hired traders Dmitry
Ryzhkov, who previously worked at Alfa Bank, and Yury Nefedov,
who had been at Aton Capital.

Prokhorov, ranked the world’s 69th richest person in the
Bloomberg Billionaire’s Index with a net worth of $13.9 billion,
bought almost half of RenCap for $500 million in September 2008.
He gained the other half after rebuffing the request of
Jennings, the controlling shareholder, for extra bailout funds,
two other people with knowledge of the matter said in November.

RenCap closed its sales and trading operations in China,
India, Kazakhstan and Ukraine last year in what it said was a
bid to cut costs and personnel. The investment bank, which was
the largest organizer of Russian equity sales in 2010, slumped
to eighth last year, data compiled by Bloomberg show.